Dell goes on Epyc server journey with AMD

Finally, it is long overdue to have some competition

There is finally some glimmer of competition in the server segment. Hallelujah.

Go AMD. We've got our first 2 socket EPYC server arriving this week. First of many if things go to plan.

Not Lying

NL-SAS is no Dutch tradition, but seems to be a consumer disc with a SAS interface....

https://www.techrepublic.com/blog/data-center/how-sas-near-line-nl-sas-and-sata-disks-compare/

2 TB? Guess you need to switch to SPARC or POWER for some main memory.

If AMD is faster than Intel, is that because AMD's heaviest processor has 32 against 28 cores or are they comparing same-price models (for similar parts, Xeon is slightly faster, but AMD a lot cheaper)?

Presumably 1 TB with a single processor installed and the maximum of 2 TB when both are present?

Power usage

I must've missed the article that talked about HP's DL38x Epyc. Was curious on power usage because I was reading mixed messages on Epyc's power usage (most of that revolved around Epyc's SOC design so you couldn't do apple to apple comparison with Intel with the extra chipset power).

Looking at this online HP Power advisor calculator https://paonline56.itcs.hpe.com/?Page=Index

I was just comparing most basic of specs (CPU + RAM).

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Spec 1 - what my org currently uses (for vsphere 5.5 enterprise+)

DL380Gen9 2x 22 core 24x16GB 1Rx4 (technically my systems report as 2 rank but the power advisor says the 2 rank dimms they list are not compatible with those processors) -

Idle power: 61W 50% usage power: 230W 100% usage power: 395W

Fan loss operation: 540W

~8.97W / core @ 100% utilization

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Spec 2 - High end Intel DL380

DL380 Gen10 2x28 core 24x16GB 2Rx8

Idle power: 64W 50% usage power: 282W 100% usage power: 500W

Fan loss operation: 644W

~8.92W / core @ 100% utilization

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Spec 3 - High end Epyc

DL380 Gen10 2x32 core 24x16GB 2Rx8

Idle power: 174W 50% usage power: 422W 100% usage power: 675W

Fan loss operation: N/A (I assume this system can survive fan failure??)

~10.54W / core @ 100% utilization

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I thought the fan loss operation metric was interesting, something I have never seen before. Interesting to see the idle power is almost triple on the AMD systems.

Taking one of my systems at random(lightly loaded) and looking at what iLO reports as power usage over the past 24 hours (22 core / 24x16GB, WITH 2 dual port PCIe 10G NICs, and 1 PCIe dual port Fibre HBA):

Average: 162W Maximum: 259W Minimum: 160W

Another random system over past 24 hrs(identical hardware)

Average: 251W Max: 335W Min: 239W

I have about 40 DL3x0 systems and have had 2 fan failures in the past 5 years (both of which on the same DL360 server, an HP StoreOnce system). Main point being I guess I am not concerned about frequent fan failures in accounting for power usage.

Having more cores is nice but have to try to balance with other factors as well of course. I find it interesting that power per core on the newer intel chips is basically identical.

I don't know if the numbers from the HP Power advisor are accurate or not - I have not noticed any other numbers(system wise) myself yet (though haven't spent a lot of time looking)

I remember being super excited about the Opteron 6000 when it first came out, still have 15 DL358 G7s in operation, so far not nearly as excited about Epyc -- though I can see it's biggest strengths aren't in the market segment that is most important to me (two socket vmware hosts). If you need massive I/O and PCIe lanes(I don't) they look awesome though.

Sell superior AMD systems or lose sales

Dull has little choice as Epyc servers will dominate sales for years to come as AMD is continuing to provide superior performance for the price. Stealing Intel's lucrative enterprise market will hurt revenues in addition to Intel's massive security issues with all CPU models. AMD and consumers/enterprise are the winners.

Dc power

I think i see a dc power option.

NVMe RAID

Here's what I don't understand - why would you buy the 24xNVMe chassis option, when there's no support for hardware RAID? In fact, why are there no hardware RAID cards that support NVMe (that I can find)? Are you meant to use a software RAID? Or just use the 24 drives separately?

What am I missing?

As we know, buyers have different priorities, but I think the largest group are focused on IO, and in this respect, intel is lame on single socket rigs. amd's 128 lanes wins hands down.

The most exciting improvement in IT has been nvme, but they are very lane hungry.